


adrift

by mahalidael



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Hallucinations, Harry Hook-centric, Mental Health Issues, Mentally Ill Harry Hook, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Post-Descendants 3, but in practice it tends to fetishize mental illness, but like you kids need to learn to be respectful, i get that the target demographic of this franchise, is in theory a good trope, is mostly too young to really grasp these things, or otherwise characterize him as CrAzY XD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 02:37:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20499494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahalidael/pseuds/mahalidael
Summary: tick tock tick tock tick tockHarry doesn’t sleep his first night at Auradon Prep.





	adrift

**Author's Note:**

> I like mentally ill Harry Hook... but not the mentally ill Harry Hook I'm actually finding in the tag. On my first viewing of Descendants I thought Harry strikes a pretty resonant resemblance to myself in terms of my public WackyTM persona, so naturally my next step was to see if anyone else was coming up with an anxiety-laden Harry. There were depictions of a mentally ill Harry... they just weren't coming from the personal place I was.
> 
> Ergo, I made my own.

_ tick tock tick tock tick tock _

Harry doesn’t sleep his first night at Auradon Prep.

* * *

Trouble begins within moments of setting foot in Auradon. Someone looks at his hook at the bridge party and says “Is that real?” He tells them with an air of swagger that it’s as real as the rest of him.

He doesn’t get the normal reaction, which is intimidation, or nonchalance, or irritation. The person’s brow furrows in… concern. Did he do something wrong? Is he wrong?

Harry doesn’t get to ask because they shake it off and talk to someone else.

His heart feels a bit strange after that. It doesn’t quite dash his elation but it feels heavier somehow. More real. It begins to sink in that this is not a fantasy. This is not a daydream that he can steer the bow of. He could be heading right for the rocks and there’s nothing he can do about it.

The VKs are set up in a big tent shelter that night. Harry normally puts his hook somewhere safe when he sleeps but there’s a dearth of lockboxes, and it’s not like he’s going to walk up to one of the Auradon people (he keeps thinking of the relief workers/administrators/doctors/etc as “Auradon people,” but he guesses everyone’s Auradon people here) and say, “Hey, I have this big fucking hook that I consider valuable as diamonds and I don’t want you carrying it off in the night, can you hold it for me, which defeats the purpose of trying to protect it anyway?”

So no, he just sleeps with it.

He wakes up in the middle of the night having rolled over and skewered himself on it, which is exactly why he tries not to do this.

He’s not going to pull it out. If he pulls it out it’ll look like his belly’s pissing blood, and even worse, he’ll look like an idiot. He taps Uma on the shoulder. She wakes easily, like all Isle people do. “What?”

“Got a wee problem,” Harry informs her, gesturing to where the hook disappears into his shirt, the red stain surrounding it.

Uma groans. “Damn it, Harry.”

Eventually they decide on telling the Auradon people, which they immediately regret because they drive Harry to the hospital. Harry’s told that he would’ve wound up here for a physical, hook or not, which makes him feel a smidge better about all the trouble. They determine that his hook didn’t hit any arteries and so slide it out of him, leaving a golf ball-sized hole in his stomach that’s magically healed up in moments.

They ask him about the hook and why he slept with it. It’s… what exactly? He got it off a piece of equipment somewhere on the Isle. He doesn’t remember which. Why? What do you mean, why? It’s cool. His dad threatened people with a hook for years and it worked out great for him.

“So it’s about your father,” says the Auradon person. “You know, he’s also in this hospital. You can visit him if you like.”

Harry feels like he’s been kneecapped. Nobody’s ever pointed it out so bluntly, and he didn’t expect it to feel that way.

“I didn’t say that” is all he can come up with.

* * *

_ tick tock tick tock tick tock _

They discharged him the next day and set him up in this room with Gil, who’s snoring happily in the bed across.

Harry doesn’t know what time it is. He owns a pocket watch, but it doesn’t tick, not anymore. It used to. When Uma was gone the _ tick tock _ made his heart race when he was alone and there was nothing else to focus on so one day he just got a two by four and smacked it until the insides broke and the lid bent and snapped off.

Harry put it back in his jacket when he was done. He likes the look.

He takes the watch and the lid out and presses them together, trying to will them whole again.

* * *

“Harrison, you have to get rid of that thing.”

She’s talking about his hook, which he’s been fidgeting so aggressively the curve of it is warm with his body heat. “Why not?”

Fairy Godmother purses her lips and considers how to proceed in the most delicate way possible. “Weapons aren’t allowed on campus.”

“So, what? What next? You’ll pull my teeth?”

“Huh?”

“My teeth are weapons. My hands are weapons. Do you want those too? This hook is a part of me.”

She rubs the bridge of her nose. “This isn’t where I wanted this conversation to go.”

“That makes two of us, miss.”

“The way I see it, you have three—well, two options. One, you give up the hook, and you’ve already make your opinion on that clear.”

“Damn straight.”

“Two, you let us dull it. We’ll get the smithing students to hold it against the grindstone until the tip is round enough to be considered safe.” Harry lets loose a peal of laughter. “It’ll be our secret. As far as anyone will know, it’s still sharp.”

“‘Secret?’ Miss, it was me and some hundred other children on an island big as a football field. You can’t rip a vape without someone noticing. What’s the third option?”

“I left it out because you would hate it.”

“I don’t think there’s _ nothing _ worse than what you already said. Lay it on me.”

Harry walks back into Remedial Goodness five minutes later with a bright yellow tennis ball on the end of his hook.

Everyone skips laughing and goes straight to crying.

“I’m going to kill all of you,” he snarls, red-faced.

* * *

The _ tick tock tick tock _ keeps Harry up all night but seems to disappear in the morning.

“Hey,” he says to Gil on a slow afternoon. “Do you ever hear anything in our room?”

“Of course! If I didn’t it would be hard to talk to you in there,” Gil says matter-of-factly.

Harry processes that for a moment before trying again. “I meant at night. When you’re asleep, do you hear things?”

“No? I’m asleep.”

“That’s not—” Harry drags his hands down his face. “That’s not what I mean.”

He means howling and banging in the middle of the night like a wild animal. He means the anxiety of a lack thereof. He means seeing a figure slumped over the writing desk and feeling his stomach drop like he’s meeting fear for the very first time. He means the relief and burden when he smells beery breath. He means learning how to put a grown man in the recovery position from a single-digit age. He means the screaming about making the goddamn ticking stop. He means the sea of alcohol that couldn’t drown it. He means a long stay in an inpatient facility with no release date in sight and he’s afraid to visit.

He means he’s afraid.

Rocks are coming but the wheel won’t turn.

* * *

Harry hasn’t slept in a week when he tries out for the fencing team. He’s taken to sustaining himself on a diet of Red Bull and Five Hour Energies he snipes out of Chad’s room. They’re nasty, but they numb his fear and exhaustion enough that he can function. The acoustics in the arena are terrible and head-spinning, to the point where screaming taunts is a common strategy, as they will most likely sound like they’re coming from the other side of the room than you’re standing in. He needs it. His normal intimidation tactics will not work, not with that bright yellow tennis ball on his hook like a clown nose, so he leaves it on a bench within his eyeshot.

He feels like he’s sleepwalking as he’s told he’ll have to win three rounds to be let on the team.

Harry has seen Carlos swordfight before and knows his weak points; he ends the match quickly. He doesn’t fare as well against Lonnie, though she reassures him that that’s supposed to happen, and anyway there’s five more people he can fight.

The next match, he’s put up against Aziz and wins.

And the next, he’s with Chad. It’s a harder fight than he expects. Maybe it just feels harder because it’s the deciding match, a chance to prove his worth, but they fight within a hair’s breadth of each other. Chad seems to have gone to the swordfighting school of, “anyone six inches out can injure you, therefore, make sure you’re zero inches from them,” and behind his mask, Harry can smell the faint tang of weak beer.

Harry’s not sure if that’s valid practice or not, but nobody calls a foul, not even when he tosses Chad to the ground.

It’s over. He wins. He wins.

“W—————— to ——— team,” says Lonnie, shaking his hand.

Harry watches Chad get up. He lurches towards Harry, and at first he’s worried Chad’s going to start a fight, but he doesn’t. He pats Harry on the back. “Good match. Oh, and no homo, but you might wanna see a doctor about your h———————s.”

Harry pauses. “My what? What the fuck did you say to me?”

Chad laughs smugly and puts his hands up. “Just being honest, dude.” What is wrong with him? Does he think this is a game?

“Who told you that?”

He pretends to be confused. “What?”

Harry can’t take any more.

He grabs Chad by the collar and slams him to the floor.

“Harry! Harry, get off!”

“Who fucking told you? Who told you, it was supposed to be a secret! Nobody knew! I made sure nobody knew!” His hands wrap around Chad’s throat despite the latter clawing at him.

Black spots appear on Chad’s face and only then does Harry realize he’s crying.

“I’m gonna shove knives in my ears to make the ticking stop and live in a padded cell getting my brains fried out of my skull for the rest of my goddamn life just like my father and it’s just a fucking joke to you you selfish privileged bastard you strumpet you—!”

Lonnie brings her practice sword under his chin and pulls up so hard his vision goes black.

When he comes back to his senses, he’s flat on his back and Lonnie has the tip of her practice sword resting on his chest. Chad is coughing so hard a lung might come out.

“Wha—” Harry tries to get up but he’s stopped by Lonnie.

“Stay there,” she says. “Don’t move until I tell you to. You might be in trouble.”

Harry’s heart falls when the reality of the situation sets in. He’s assaulted a prince. He’s going to jail just when he’s seen the light of day for the first time. “No,” he tries to assert firmly, but supine and barely conscious in the fencing arena it comes out as a strangled sob.

Chad is on his haunches surrounded by concerned teammates. Carlos looks down on him. “Are you okay?”

“No! You literally just watched him choke me out.”

“Yep,” says Carlos. “I bet you want to press charges, huh.”

“Yeah!” Chad says indignantly.

“I bet you want to expose yourself to the press circus and get cameras flashed in your face nonstop.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“I bet you want to put your whole family under a hot lamp as the masses argue about whether you threw the first punch or not.”

“Um,” says Chad, sounding less sure of himself.

“...You see what I’m getting at?” Carlos says. “You want to think this through a little more?”

Chad crosses his arms silently.

Lonnie has not left Harry’s side since she knocked him down, and he’s not sure whether to be grateful or embarrassed. “What did he say to get you so worked up, anyway?”

“He said I should go to the crazy house ‘cause I’m hallucinating,” Harry slurs. The last five hour energy is wearing off.

“What?” cries Chad. “I didn’t say that! I said he had to see a doctor for his bad breath!”

Harry turns onto his side to face Chad, his first major movement in the last five minutes. “You what?”

“You know! I said you have halitosis.”

“You… said _ that _,” says Harry slowly. “Not that I was hallucinating.”

Chad says, “No? What, _ are _ you hallucinating?” and Harry realizes everyone’s staring at him.

Then he gives up and breaks down on the floor.

(“Jeez, I always thought _ I’d _ be the weepy bitch in this kind of situation,” mutters Chad, right before Carlos slaps him. Everyone pretends they didn’t see it.)

* * *

Harry turns down a trip to the counselor’s office, since getting microscoped is really not what he needs right now. But he can’t go back to his room. So they take him up to Uma’s.

Uma’s half of the room is mostly taken up with stacks of paper, accords and things that she looks over as part of her self-appointed duty as spokesperson of the VKs. She’s at her desk when Harry staggers in with a splitting headache and a shaking soul. Carlos is doing his best to support him, but he’s a small pup, so he’s glad he made it up here before his legs well and truly give out.

Carlos nearly goes down with him until Uma saves the day by grabbing him. The shaking is not so great. “Harry? Harry, what happened?”

“Ugh,” is all he can force out.

“He had a panic attack in the middle of fencing. I think he’s just exhausted, but he refused to go back to his own room so I took him here.”

“That may be the smartest thing you’ve ever come up with,” says Uma.

“Wow, _ thanks _,” says Carlos, the look on his face implying he’s thinking of way more impressive things than this, and after that, Harry is out like a light.

He sleeps. He sleeps harder than he has in a week, and the relief and clarity he feels after waking up makes him want to cry again.

But he doesn’t, because Carlos and Uma are still here. Carlos is asleep in a chair. Uma is hunched over her desk; whether she is asleep or not is beyond him, since her octopodal evolution has apparently brought on night vision. And… it’s night. He looks out the window and sees stars. He’s lying on Uma’s bed. The bed across is empty, but Bonny has always been a night owl, curfew or no.

Uma is not asleep. “Had a good nap, sleeping beauty?”

Harry chuckles quietly and rubs a streak of eyeliner off his cheek. “Mmm.”

Uma pushes on Carlos’s shoulder to wake him up. She pushes a little too hard and the chair falls over. “Ah! What happened?!”

“You just… fell out of the chair accidentally,” says Uma completely seriously.

“Yes, I was there,” adds Harry.

Uma smirks as Carlos picks himself up off the floor. “Speaking of being there,” she continues, her smirk fading, “tell Harry what you told me.”

Carlos clears his throat. “That stuff you said while you were choking out Chad—about the ticking and the padded cell…”

Harry feels his throat tighten under Uma’s gaze. There’s no hiding now. “They’re telling me my father’s schizophrenic.” Uma’s brow furrows. Carlos covers his mouth with his hands. Harry knows what “schizophrenic” means, the Auradon people told him. Uma, perhaps not, she’s been busy. Carlos might. “The hallucinations, the confusion, the alcoholism a little bit, it all falls under that. They put him in the psych ward. They’re not discharging him soon.”

“...Or maybe not ever, huh,” says Uma.

“Yeah, and guess what?” says Harry. “It’s _ genetic _. I’m at the age where I could have my first psychotic break, and for the last week I’ve been kept up all night by a mysterious tick tock-ing noise. You see—you see why I’m losing my shit?”

Uma sets down next to him and places her hand on his back until he slumps, resigned, into her lap. “Yep, there you go.”

“I’m getting your pants dirty,” he protests weakly.

“Since when have I cared, Harry?”

* * *

Harry spends the night sleeping in Uma’s bed, his face buried in her chest. At some point Carlos takes his leave. In the morning, Harry goes up to his room for his class things and finds something odd.

“Hi Harry!” says Gil. “Are you feeling better?”

“Uh, yeah. Why does Carlos have a ladder?”

Because Carlos does have a ladder, a folding one he’s set up in the middle of the room, and he’s doing something to the ceiling fan. “So I connected the dots,” he says, putting the nuts and bolts back into the fan. “You couldn’t sleep in here, and you slept just fine in Uma’s room. Then _ I _came down here on my way back to my room to tell Gil where you were. I heard something ticking. I asked Gil if there was anything he did before bed. It’s stuffy in here, so he turns on the ceiling fan. And this ceiling fan…” He gestures for Harry to hold out his hand. He does, and Carlos drops a tiny screw, barely as large as the nail on Harry’s pinky finger. “...had the wrong size screw.”

He comes down the ladder, wiping his brow. Harry is speechless.

“Gil, hit the power.”

Gil turns on the fan. The ticking is gone.

“You’ve still got time,” Carlos says.

And Harry’s aware that he still has problems. He still hasn’t passed remedial mathematics or gotten that tennis ball off his hook. He hasn’t gotten half of Auradon to look him in the eye and Chad is definitely never going to do that now. He hasn’t sprung his father out of bedlam.

But the wheel of his ship is unstuck. The rocks are passing by. The sea is scary and open but importantly it is free.

“Thank you,” says Harry, and goes to start a new day.

**Author's Note:**

> I think he's going to be okay.
> 
> Final note: Harry's hook is a metaphor (what for is up to your interpretation, though I feel it's pretty obvious) and what he ultimately chooses to do with it is meant to be open-ended.


End file.
